HTTP security headers are a simple way to add an additional layer of security to your WordPress website. They can help protect your site from common attacks such as clickjacking and cross-site scripting, and improve your visitors’ online privacy.
The HSTS security header instructs browsers to only load your website over HTTPS if you have an active SSL certificate. This ensures your website’s data is encrypted during transmission.
HSTS
HSTS is an opt-in security feature that allows web servers to tell browsers that they must only make HTTPS connections to their sites. This prevents hackers from intercepting an HTTP connection and directing it to an insecure version of your site. HSTS is especially useful in cases where you have sensitive data stored on your server, such as credit card information or passwords.
Using this WordPress plugin, you can enable and control HTTP strict transport security on your site or blog. You can also apply HSTS to subdomains, which will enforce the use of HTTPS for any requests to those domains.
This is an important step because it ensures that users will always be able to access your website securely. This is because HSTS ensures that the browser will always send HTTPS to your site, regardless of what user typed in the URL.
In addition to preventing click-through insecurity, HSTS can improve page load speed and performance of your website. Since HSTS is applied at the server level, it can also help prevent the loading of unsecure resources such as image galleries.
Google has even rewarded websites that use HSTS with better search engine rankings. This is because Google has categorized the presence of HSTS as a ranking factor for a “site quality” score.
Another important aspect of HSTS is HSTS preloading, which allows you to list your domain on an official HSTS list maintained by Chrome and Firefox. This enables a global list of hosts that automatically enforce HTTPS on their domain. This can be helpful in cases where you need to make sure that all users have access to your secure web site, even if they are connected to an open public WiFi network.
To set up HSTS for your website, add the following HSTS header to the server’s response: Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=10886400 (the default value). This sets the value of the max-age parameter, which is the number of seconds in which a browser should only use HTTPS connections to your site.
To turn off HSTS, simply remove the HSTS setting from the server’s response. To do this, send a request to your domain: path?aka-hsts-max-age=0.
X-Frame-Options
X-Frame-Options is one of the security HTTP headers that can help prevent clickjacking attacks. This is a type of attack where an attacker tricks visitors into clicking on a link that will load a page in an iframe. This can be used to download malware, harvest likes for social media pages, or steal credentials and personal data.
Adding X-Frame-Options to your server configuration is an easy way to help protect against clickjacking. This is a common way of preventing this type of attack from occurring, but it’s important to note that not all browsers support X-Frame-Options.
The X-Frame-Options header tells a web browser if a resource should be rendered within a frame or an iframe HTML element. It is important to note that this header is not a standard, and browsers are able to ignore it if it doesn’t contain the correct values.
It is also important to note that this header is deprecated. It has been replaced by the Content Security Policy (CSP) frame-ancestors directive, which is supported by all major browsers.
How X-Frame-Options works
The X-Frame-Options HTTP response header has been around since 2008 and is a security feature that can help prevent clickjacking attacks. It is not a web standard but it has been implemented in most major browsers and is useful to help protect against this type of attack.
When set to SAMEORIGIN, X-Frame-Options will prevent webpages from being loaded in iframes. This is a critical step to help prevent clickjacking attacks that are commonly used by attackers to trick visitors into clicking on a link that will take them to a malicious site.
To use X-Frame-Options, add the following line to your server config: “X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN”. This is an optional line and should be added for all URLs except those that start with /plugins/servlet/.
Ensure that everything is working correctly after making this change, including the login page and any paths that are whitelisted in your server config. If you have any problems, please submit a bug report.
The Allow X-Frame-Options addon is a simple and lightweight wordpress plugin that allows you to add a security header to your website. Its main purpose is to help prevent clickjacking attacks, and it can be easily installed in your wordpress site.
No-Sniff
The No-Sniff plugin is a WordPress security headers plugin that helps protect your site from cross site scripting and clickjacking attacks. The plugin allows you to set a variety of HTTP security headers, including CSP (Content Security Policy), Feature Policy and Referrer Policy.
The X-Content-Type-Options HTTP header is one of the most important HTTP security headers to implement because it prevents web browsers from performing MIME type sniffing, which is a common attack vector against websites. Often, MIME type sniffing is exploited by attackers to trick victims into uploading malicious images that include JavaScript code. To prevent this from happening, the X-Content-Type-Options response header should be set to nosniff to disable browser content sniffing.
Another important HTTP security header is the X-XSS-Protection response header. This header is generally enabled in modern browsers and will stop the page from loading if it detects a cross-site scripting attack. It also protects against cross-origin resource sharing (CORS) and clickjacking attacks.
It also prevents browsers from displaying an image that does not belong to the declared Content-Type, which can be used to trick victims into downloading and executing malicious files. The X-Content-Type-Options header with the value nosniff will prevent all modern browsers from performing MIME type sniffing and, thus, reducing the risk of drive-by downloads.
Using the No-Sniff plugin is an easy way to implement HTTP security headers on your website. This plugin works automatically and will not require you to change any code or server configuration files.
When you install the No-Sniff plugin, a popup will appear with instructions to add HTTP security headers on your site. You will need to enable HSTS, apply HSTS to subdomains and preload HSTS. You can also turn off the no-sniff header if you do not need it.
Once you are done with adding the HTTP security headers, you can test them on your site. The best way to do this is to use a tool like Security Headers6. This tool will analyze your site’s HTTP response headers and display them on a page with a rating system.
Alternatively, you can set up the X-Content-Type-Options and X-XSS-Protection headers manually on your site. However, this is not the easiest option for beginners and it can cause unexpected issues.
Max-Age
The max-age directive (Cache-Control:max-age) tells the browser that a cached copy of a resource is valid for a certain amount of time. After that time has expired, the browser will need to re-request the resource from the server to obtain a fresh version. This is useful for preventing the loss of data if the resource changes.
The Cache-Control header is an HTTP header that specifies how a resource should be cached, where it should be cached and its maximum age before expiring (i.e., time to live). It is also used to set the expiration date for cookies.
In addition, this header can also be used to determine how long a preflight request’s results should be cached. This is especially helpful if cross-origin resources are shared across different web servers.
There are many types of max-age values, including those that depend on how frequently a resource is modified or changed. For example, if content is updated four times a day at regular intervals, you might want to set the max-age value to 21600 seconds (6 hours).
Another useful value is one year (31536000) for extremely large resources that aren’t likely to change very often. This gives the user agent time to check if the document has changed.
A user should always use the max-age value specified by the Cache-Control:max-age directive when determining whether to trust a cached response. This prevents a resource from being considered stale even after it has been downloaded from the server and then distrusted.
This is important because some users might not trust a website that has been insecure for years. It could be because of the way it was built or because it has been subjected to attacks by hackers.
If your web site is only accessible over HTTPS, you can set this value to a number that will cause browsers to always connect to the site via secure connections when possible. This will help prevent the use of man-in-the-middle attacks and keep your site secure.
The max-age header can be applied to a single domain or a subdomain. The value that is returned must be at least 31536000 (1 year). It can also be used to prevent HTTPS requests from causing the Strict Transport Security header to expire.
